


Every Me and Every You

by MeinongsJungleBook



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Abuse, Character Study, Falling In Love, Hatred, Major Character Injury, Megalomania, Mind Meld, Murder, Naivety, Other, War, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-07-31 03:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20108656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeinongsJungleBook/pseuds/MeinongsJungleBook
Summary: When Windblade merges with Metrotitan, she lives every other version of her life in an instant.





	Every Me and Every You

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Windscream Week prompts "AU" and "Favourite Moment".
> 
> I cheated for the Favourite Moment thing because this moment was actually a whole bunch of wacky, unexplained moments.

“We cannot let you hold the mind of a Prime, but my mind is yours,” Windblade told Metrotitan, allowing a Titan to reach into her mind for the third time in her life.

The first time with Caminus barely counted; it hadn’t really been a full merge, but rather her mind skimming over the outer reaches of his for a brief moment, as a final test to assess her suitability for Cityspeaking. However, even that momentary, partial connection had been one of the most profound and overwhelming experiences of her life up to that point – all the dreams and imaginings she’d had about the immense and sacred nature of the Titan mind hadn’t prepared her for the staggering reality. For a second her mind had been a part of something beyond its comprehension, but even though she couldn’t fully fathom it, her understanding was still ripped open wider than it had ever been before. In that moment she saw further into infinity than she had ever seen, and in that impossible immensity, she felt the constant, steady thrum of Caminus’s love – gentle, yet powerful beyond imagining. It flowed into her, filling up the hole in her mind that had been blown open by the raw revelation of the merge, and Windblade finally understood utterly that even against the cold incomprehensibility of forever, love still mattered. In that moment a part of herself had been defined forever more. 

Metroplex had been her first complete merge, and it had been both empowering and overpowering, as the barriers of her being had disintegrated in an instant and she had become a tiny piece of an entity so far beyond what she had been the second before. She felt herself stretched out over time and space; she filled up streets and circuits, as memories from primordial times far before her forging filtered into her and placed her among the ancients. She was then pulled out further, far beyond the stars, transcending the universe itself as the parts of Metroplex that reached out past reality became parts of her. She could feel the other layers of the multiverse that Metroplex’s spacebridge slipped through to instantly traverse the vastness of space pressing in on dimensions of herself she didn’t know she had. Yet as far and as cold as the spaces between those stars and realities were, Windblade didn’t feel alone; Metroplex’s love was as deep and as constant as Caminus’s, and he offered it to her as an anchor, to keep her from being swept away in the infinity of his being. 

This connection was not like those others. Metrotitan didn’t offer her his love freely the way Caminus and Metroplex had – rather he tore her piece from piece to find any reason to think she was worthy of it. Windblade was unravelled in ways beyond the physical or psychological; she was metaphysically undone as Metrotitan picked apart her possibilities and used them to rebuild her in new shapes that were both unrecognisable yet still somehow her. Time, space and being broke down around her as she lived an infinity of lives in an instant; she was Windblade the Camien Cityspeaker who wanted so badly to change things for the better for everyone, but she was also everything else it was in any way possible for her to be...

...she was determined to complete this mission successfully with as little loss as possible, just as she was every time she was sent out on assignment. For all her determination, she wasn’t always able to obtain her objective, or save everybody, but she was still an elite agent with one of the best records in the Camien Forces, and she intended to keep it as exemplary as possible, for the sake of herself, her allies, Caminus, and of course, Shining Solus. She felt the comforting weight of her ammo belt and the comforting presence of Chromia at her side as she readied her gun and surveyed the corridor through her visor, which fed her information about their surrounding environment. She was one of the best sharpshooters in the Camien Forces, proficient in all forms of rifles and blasters; any combat during this mission was likely to be close range, so she was armed appropriately with a handheld blaster that was most efficient when used up close. Her ammo belt contained charges for the blaster that could melt through even the thickest armour when fired at close range. 

“I’m detecting Lightbright’s spark signature four decks up; she appears to still be confined to her cell, but the hack might come into effect any time within the next seven minutes, and the alarm will be disabled for the next fifteen. We proceed as planned,” she told Chromia, who nodded in understanding. 

Chromia was Windblade’s dearest friend and trusted partner on almost every mission, and Windblade credited their close cooperation as one of the main factors in their high success rate, but Windblade was a little anxious about how Chromia might behave on this mission. Chromia had an aggressive, judgemental streak, which Windblade could usually help her manage, but she was worried that it could potentially get out of hand here. Chromia regarded Lightbright as a traitor, even though she’d agreed to give them the intelligence she’d gathered in exchange for her rescue, and Chromia _really_ didn’t take kindly to traitors.

Windblade wasn’t ready to go so far as to call Lightbright a traitor; she’d admitted that she’d fallen in love with the enemy, but she still hadn’t done anything to compromise Caminus, beyond her emotional compromise. Windblade would never admit it to Chromia, but part of her was strangely...taken with knowing that Lightbright had fallen for one of their enemies, and that he apparently loved her back. It made her wonder if their war could end with something other than combat. Windblade had been a fighter in the war between the Primes since the day she was forged, a war that stretched back millions of years to the moment when Megatronus and Liege Maximo had almost killed Solus Prime, plunging Cybertron into this endless cycle of conflict. While Windblade had survived this long, many of the people she had cared for hadn’t, and almost every day she found herself dreaming of a better world where they no longer had to fight and die. Maybe if they could just talk to each other, instead of killing one another all the time, they would be able to build that better world together. 

Maybe if they successfully rescued Lightbright, and Chromia didn’t do anything stupid, Windblade would be able to talk to her, and learn something more valuable than just more enemy troop movements and energon store locations. It would be a place to start...

...to start a new age for her people (and they were _all _her people, _every _speck of life) she had always known that she’d have to transform into something new herself. Something new, but something still fundamentally _her_. She’d have to become the embodiment of her core truth, the truth that she had spent all her life up to that point in the process of forging, clearing away the slag that had stood in the way of the completion of her goals. She'd had to evolve towards her destined perfection to bring about the perfect utopia that all life in the universe deserved. She'd had to become real and powerful enough to remake the universe in the form of the vision that spurned her on. 

She had always viewed the Titans as the ultimate examples of divine power, even more so than the Primes. For most of her life, the Primes had been legends that she had been led to believe in, but the Titans had been there beneath her feet, their epic power clearly evident in every aspect of their immense beings. When she finally merged with them, she found that the scale of their unfathomable minds dwarfed that of their massive bodies, and she became even more in awe of everything they were. So it was only appropriate that her final form should be that of the divine entities that had inspired her throughout her entire journey. 

She had finally arrived at her truth, and it was so profoundly, exponentially greater than the little shadow of an existence that she'd once had. It was incredible that the tiny speck of hope and moxie that she was before could have somehow evolved into the immensity of what she was now. That other version of herself felt like an entirely different entity – so minuscule and fleeting against the endlessness of time and space that she could now span with a mind that stretched beyond the reality her little seed of a former self had been confined to. That little seed had once fought for the right of all beings to live their best lives and be their best selves, but now she couldn’t see how any form of existence could possibly have any worth compared to this. In her new, transcendental mind, her vision of the perfect universe came into sharper focus than ever before.

The reluctant Prime stood before her, attempting to stop her, something he’d made a habit of doing more and more as their relationship had grown steadily more antagonistic over the years. He had sparked anger and frustration within her, but also sadness and pity, because ultimately she knew that they wanted the same thing: what was best for everyone. The difference between them was just that he couldn’t see the way to reach that goal as she could, and he mistakenly thought that she was leading them all astray. He pointlessly pointed a blaster at her, as though that had any meaning to her anymore, and spoke words that tried to appeal to a sense of smallness that no longer existed within her. 

Windblade now felt emotions far beyond the petty shadows of feelings she had once been limited to, but what she now felt as she gazed down at the Prime below her most resembled the old sense of pity he’d once sparked in her. He was so small, and so lost – he had no way of understanding the profound rightness of everything she was and was doing. How could he? With the extremely limited processing power of his tiny mind, he could only ever understand very little. Unless she helped him. She wanted to help everyone, and he was no exception. She reached out and plucked him from the column he was standing on in his attempt to confront her and opened the panel that had been concealing her sacred Titan spark that burned with holy light. She would burn away all the confusion that muddied his vision and show him his true self, and open him to the only truth of the universe that made any sense. He would be the first to receive her divine light.

And so Windblade plunged Optimus Prime into her spark... 

...her spark spun with giddy excitement as she twirled through the air, her gossamer wings fluttering gleefully. Windblade was always excited to see the Giant, even back when he’d been so incredibly rude and frankly aggressive, because seeing anything as new and strange as him was a total thrill! After all, her dimension was _so boring_; hardly anything interesting ever happened, so having the Giant show up was the best, and definitely the most exciting thing to ever happen to her! Plus he was far more charming these days now that he didn’t keep screeching about her being a hallucination or a spy all the time, although he did still like to call her ‘bug’, but she just thought that was funny. 

Windblade had always been taught that the dimensions beyond her own were full of monsters and evil things, which was why Solus Prime had forged their little universe as a haven for her creations, before she was destroyed defending it from her wicked brothers. Yet, as scary as some of the stories about the Realms Beyond were, Windblade had always found them intriguing and exciting, and part of her had always dreamed of becoming an adventurer exploring what lay beyond. Maybe it wasn’t actually as bad as all the stories made it out to be; maybe some of it was just as an intensely wonderful as the other parts were intensely terrifying. Maybe nothing in her universe matched her most fanciful and wondrous dreams because all those things she’d dreamed of and wanted were out there in beyond, waiting for her to find them. 

While some of the stories of the Realms Beyond were truly terrifying, they didn’t scare her nearly as much as the thought that her universe may one day fade away, as some people said would happen when Solus’s forge finally burned out, now that she was no longer there to stoke it. If it was true that their universe might fade out one day, then surely it was their _duty_ to venture into the Realms Beyond to save themselves. Windblade often fantasised about being the hero who journeyed into the beyond to stoke Solus’s forge and save them all. It was said that the Realms Beyond were filled with brilliant orbs of light, burning impossibly hot and bright, called stars – surely they could be used to relight Solus’s forge! Windblade dreamed of the stars all the time these days, and she wanted nothing more than to see them for real.

There were a few others who shared her desire to contact the Realms Beyond, either because they were scared of fading away, or because they were desperately curious to know what lay outside their tiny universe, or both (she was very much in this last category). Together she and these fellow Starsingers tried to call out to other side (in secret, as trying to reach the Realms Beyond in any way was forbidden), hoping it would call back. When the Giant had appeared, Windblade could only assume that she had succeeded, and when he eventually told her that his name was Starscream, she knew beyond any doubt that she had. 

Starscream had been very suspicious of her at first, but she’d refused to leave his side, which had made him extremely annoyed, and he’d said all sorts of extremely rude things to her. But she just couldn’t leave the most amazing thing that had ever happened to her alone, plus she couldn’t help but get the impression that he seemed lonely, and maybe that was why he eventually started talking to her properly instead of just screeching insults and rude words. Once he gained some manners, she explained everything about her little universe and her dreams and attempts to reach the other side, and the more she explained the less suspicious he became and the more intrigued he seemed. 

He offered her a deal – he'd help her join him in the Realms Beyond and save her universe, if she did certain things for him when he asked. She’d agreed of course! She didn’t understand the purpose behind most of the things he asked her to do, but it didn’t matter; as far as she could tell none of it was hurting anyone, and anything was worth a chance to reach the Realms Beyond! Especially now that she knew Starscream was there...they could see and hear each other, but they couldn’t touch one another, and Windblade found herself wishing more and more that she could reach out and touch this majestic Giant from the other side. He was immense and powerful in every way that she was tiny and delicate, and while she was a creature of her little, closed-off reality, he was an entity of the great Realms Beyond, and so an avatar of all their incredible wonders. She felt so privileged and special that she was the one who could speak to such a being. Plus he was charming and funny and smart and _he totally understood her frustration with her little boring life._

“Come now, my dear little bug,” Starscream said, making a come-hither gesture, “I have another job for you.”

Windblade gave another excited spin in the air, before she went to hover over his hand as though she was perching on his finger. She wished she really could alight on his hand and feel him beneath her – _she so wished that she could really touch him_, and when their plans were finally complete, _she would be able to! They would finally be truly together._ She eagerly listened to his instructions, ready to do whatever it would take to bring that wonderful day about as soon as possible. Nothing bad could possibly come of anything to do with her dearest Starscream...

...dearest Starscream lay on the ground, his face contorted in pain and horror, steam and smoke rising from the deep, energon soaked damage across his chest, where his spark momentarily flickered, and then faded out into nothingness, before his broken, lifeless frame started to grey. Windblade stood over him, gazing down at this spectacle thoughtfully, as she considered the chapter of her life that had ended with Starscream’s death, and the new chapter that would start in his long-awaited absence. 

Ever since Starscream had entered her life, he’d harassed, belittled, insulted, obstructed, manipulated, hurt and _tortured _her; Windblade had thought she’d known what hatred felt like before she’d met Starscream , but what she’d felt before was nothing compared to the passionate and profound _loathing _he’d taught her how to feel. He’d taught her many other things as well, lessons she didn’t want to learn, but he gave her no choice. He took a sick, sadistic delight in pulling her down to his level, making her dirty her hands and spark until she was as warped and tainted as he was. It wasn’t enough that she had to suffer being in servitude to him, he wanted her to suffer what it was like to become him.

The more he tormented her, and reshaped her in his image, the more she despised him, and as their relationship became more toxic, he granted her more power, and drew her in closer towards him. Eventually she found herself as his SiC, seething with rage and abhorrence besides him, forced to endure his presence more than ever before. She didn’t fully understand why he did this; maybe he wanted to taunt her with the knowledge that, as powerful as she became, she would still always be his pawn to play with as he saw fit. Maybe this was just his way of keeping her close, so he could torment her all the more. Or perhaps this was all a part of his effort to transform her into the same sick and obscene creature that he was.

She was a far cry from the kind, idealistic bot she had been when she’d arrived on Cybertron. The hard choices were no longer hard for her, and she hated Starscream for that more than anything; she hated that he’d taken away her capacity to care about the suffering she inflicted in the name of the so-called ‘greater good’. She hated him, and she hated that he’d made her become him. She was now cynical, ruthless and bitter, and she vainly altered her frame to create an increasingly glamorous and intimidating presence. She was defined and driven by hatred now, just as he was; the thoughts of what he’d done to her, and the desire to punish and eliminate him, dominated her mind. 

She’d started out trying to remove him legitimately by exposing his many crimes, but he always found a way to make someone else take the fall for him, so rather than ridding them all of Starscream, Windblade had only ended up condemning innocents. She’d become increasingly ruthless in her attempts to end him; it started in subtle ways, such as delaying the transmission of information to warn him of danger, but after that failed, things escalated, until she was outright trying to murder him. She had already taken plenty of lives thanks to him, so what was one more? In the past, he'd always found her out before she could plunge the knife in, and when he confronted her they would fight, and they would hurt each other, and she hated it and she knew that he loved it, which made her hate it all the more, and then they’d just end up back where they were.

Over-confidence was always one of Starscream’s deepest flaws however, and it eventually proved to be a fatal one, as he grew too complacent in her attempts to end him, allowing her the chance to slip past his defenses and finally go in for the kill. Ironically, it was one of his own old schemes that he’d once used against Megatron that had proven to be his undoing. She’d studied his old methods, and found where he’d come close to finally ridding himself of his tormentor, only to be thwarted at the last moment. Studying the events from a perspective of hindsight, she was able to see where he’d gone wrong, and thus alter the scheme to amend its flaws.

As she watched his spark flicker out before her optics, it occurred to her that she never would have been able to finally achieve this if he hadn’t made her what she was. She had once baulked at the idea of killing, even when it came to wholly wicked and despicable beings such as Starscream, but now it all came to her so easily. She wasn’t anything like the naïve and idealistic bot she had once been; now she was a killer, a survivor, and a conqueror – the heir to an empire that would pass to her now that Starscream lay dead at her feet. Starscream had recreated her in his image, but she had improved on the design, as was evident by the fact that she had finally succeeded where he had constantly failed.

She felt an odd compulsion to hesitantly reach out towards the body that lay below her, as a strange sense of affinity overcame her, in the place of the overwhelming loathing she usually felt whenever she saw Starscream. When she looked at what was left of him now, she no longer saw her despised tormentor, instead she saw the remains of a chrysalis that she had finally shed, to become what she needed to be. Starscream never truly succeeded, because he was simply an imperfect but necessary prototype required to create her. She had been irrevocably tainted by what he’d put her through, and she could never go back to who she’d once been; she’d hated him so much for that, but as she stood over his body now, she felt an incredible, intoxicating rush of power, something her old self had never known. There had always been part of her that had craved power, and now she was High Lord of a galactic empire which, in a sense, Starscream had given to her. She could never be what she was before, but she intended to own everything she had become.

As she gazed down as his greying husk, she allowed herself to feel what little empathy she was still capable of for her flawed failure of a predecessor and counterpart, before she ordered in a guard to remove the trash at her feet from her sight...

...her sight was scrambled in the chaos – obstructed by smoke and momentarily blinded by the bright explosions – so it took a moment for her optics to reset themselves to allow her to see how she had survived. She could feel a frame pressed against hers and an arm wrapped around her back, and she knew that whoever was holding her had been the one to save her life after she’d thought she’d have no choice but to sacrifice it to save them all. As her vision cleared, Starscream’s face came into view, energon running down from his brow and optics, his expression almost neutral despite the extensive damage he’d received, which became evident as Windblade took in the state of the rest of his frame. His left arm was completely gone, along with a chunk of the left side of his torso, and cables and twisted scraps of metal hung in their place, with energon dripping down them. A couple of stumps of jagged metal were all that remained of his wings. 

Emotion overwhelmed Windblade at the sight of him, and without even thinking she raised her hand to gently cup the side of his cracked helm. Of all the people to save her, she hadn’t expected it to be Starscream, not when the risk to himself had been so high. Yet he had risked almost certain death and suffered all this damage to not only pull her to safety, but to shield her from taking damage herself. She couldn’t understand why he’d done this after he’d spent so long only ever looking out for himself, and she didn’t know why he’d done it for _her_. 

Yet, as she gazed up at him, things in her mind started to fall into place. They still antagonised each other, but it had been a while since they’d truly been enemies, and as she thought about it, she realised that at some point they’d somehow become one another’s most constant allies. But not just allies – there was something between them that was deeper and more personal. She’d never referred to Starscream as her friend before, but somewhere along the way that’s what they’d become, even if neither of them had acknowledged it. And he’d changed a lot in the time she’d known him – he was still obnoxious and manipulative, but he didn’t go out of his way to be really cruel like he used to. He’d become more reasonable, and more willing to listen to her ideas; she didn’t dread having to be in his presence like she once had, in fact sometimes she actually looked forward to it.

As they’d spent more time together without being at each other’s throats, she’d come to realise that they had a lot more in common than she’d originally thought, and that they ultimately wanted very similar things, even though they often disagreed on the means to arrive at those ends. And yet, the more they had come to understand each other, the more they’d come to find ways of reaching their shared goals that they could both agree on; ways that were acceptable to Windblade’s conscience while employing some of the methods that Starscream knew were tried and true. They’d taught each other things as well, from practical skills, like Starscream teaching her how to use ranged weapons, to more personal life lessons, like Windblade helping Starscream become more emotionally open and genuine in the real friendships he was starting to develop.

In addition to these more significant ways they’d cooperated to help each other and the world they both wanted to see flourish, Starscream had done little things for her as well. Little things like saying something to embarrass a council member who had rudely snapped at her earlier in a meeting, or putting aside a bottle of a very rare vintage of Camien engex for her that he'd known she wanted to try. Little things, but now that she felt the energon from his wounds drip onto her frame, she finally understood how much they meant. She realised how much he really had changed, how much had changed between them, and how much they’d come to mean to each other. 

“Thank you, thank you for saving me,” she whispered to him. “We’re safe now, the Citadel is gone, and everything’s going to be fine. We’ll get you fixed up, and everything is going to be great. We’re heroes, both of us, and I’ll be there by your side to support you in the fallout of all this, I promise. You can count on me, just as I know I can count on you. I’m going to be there for you Starscream,” she told him earnestly, and while he didn’t say anything in response, she felt him incline his head ever so slightly to lean into her touch, and when he did so, Windblade felt the beginnings of something stir within her. But she didn’t have time to examine it, because the increasingly glazed look in Starscream’s optics and the amount of energon she could feel spilling out of him were starting to send her into a panic. She had no idea how deep the damage he’d sustained went, but however bad it was, she needed to get it fixed. She couldn’t lose him, not now, she just couldn't, “Starscream, everything’s going to be just great, but I need you stay with me, ok? Just stay with me; stay focused on me. Please Starscream, you need to stay with me. _Please _Starscream. _Don’t leave me. I need you_...”

***

Merging with Metrotitan had been like nothing Windblade had ever experienced before. She felt as though it should be one of those things that would go on to define her, but she had no idea how to understand or process the experience, and thus no idea how to think and act differently in reaction to what she’d been through. Her memories were a jumbled mess, and more than anything she just remembered the sense of how surreal and overwhelming it had all been. She returned to Cybertron feeling maudlin after her spat with Optimus, with no idea how to use the profound experience she’d had to help her work through any of her many, many problems.

After she received the alarm and convened with the others at The Spire, she saw Starscream for the first time since before her trip to Earth, and the sight of him triggered something in her. For a moment she was overwhelmed by an impossibly conflicting deluge of emotions – fear, fascination, disgust, attraction, pity, envy, grief, joy, rage, trust, regret, hope, hatred, love – it all hit her at once and she almost collapsed on the spot. Then just as quickly as she had been hit by the wave of emotion, it dissipated, and she hurriedly regained her composure before anyone had noticed. When she looked at Starscream again, she felt the far more familiar feelings of anger, fear, sadness and frustration, but tugging at the back of her mind were those other tumultuous emotions. They were so faint that she could barely feel them, and each of them seemed to be attached to a fragmented memory that she couldn’t bring into focus. 

She didn’t know what she and Starscream had been to each other in those other lives, she just knew that in some of them, things between them had been very different. Maybe if things were different between them in her other lives, things could be different between them in this one as well. Maybe there was more potential within Starscream do be something other than a selfish and paranoid tyrant than she had previously thought, just as she knew there was some sort of deep and untapped potential within herself to be more than she was now. Maybe they could both be better.

**Author's Note:**

> The part about Windblade sorta semi-merging with Caminus as a test was taken from [oriflamme's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oriflamme/pseuds/oriflamme) fic [deep, dim soul of a star](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11213838).


End file.
